Warren was a dull man who excited America’s passions

Depending on your perspective, Earl Warren, shown with a future California voter in 1949, is revered or reviled. Regardless, he was one of the most most important politicians of the 20th century. A three-term governor of California, he was appointed chief justice of the United States by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, and his court made some of the most important rulings in our history, including Brown vs. Board of Education. For more on this Teachable Moment, go to Tennessean.com/
section/OPINION04.
(Photo: State of California archives)

“Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.”

When Earl Warren assumed the position atop American jurisprudence as a recess appointment by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Oct. 5, 1953, he brought with him a reputation as one of the most popular, and unexciting, Republican politicians in America. He was unanimously confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate on March 1, 1954.

His tenure as chief justice of the Supreme Court revealed him to be a much different man than admirers of his political record anticipated. The rulings of the Warren Court shaped the America we live in today in profound ways.

He was a quiet man, but willing to do what he thought was right and suffer the criticism.

“Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for.”

Warren was born in Los Angeles on March 19, 1891. His parents were immigrants from Scandinavia. His father worked for the railroad until being blacklisted for participating in a strike when Warren was 3. They moved to Bakersfield. Though his father was murdered during a robbery, Warren had a robust childhood in suburban LA, graduating from Bakersfield High School and matriculating to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his undergraduate (1912) and law (1914) degrees. He played clarinet in the Cal band, and was a Sigma Phi.

He worked for an Oakland law firm until joining the Army in World War I. After the war he worked as a deputy city attorney in Oakland. In 1925, he was elected as Alameda County district attorney; he was continually re-elected until being named attorney general for California in 1939.

As attorney general, he was responsible for the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, a decision he later regretted.

In 1942, he was elected governor. In 1946, the Democrats also made him their nominee for governor, and he won nearly 95 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in 1950, the only California governor elected to three consecutive terms.

He was a believer in the efficiency movement and modernized California government. He built up the University of California system and a community college system; he funded a massive highway program throughout the state that served as a model for the 1956 interstate system.

His work ethic hid what a master politician he was, and obscured his personal philosophies.

It was his skills as a politician that became manifest as chief justice, not his legal intellect. He forged majorities in some of the most controversial cases in the court’s history.

Liberals were terrified when Eisenhower appointed him to the bench; conservatives came to hate him.

One of his first major decisions came in Brown vs. Board of Education, which overturned “separate but equal” as a legal defense and political philosophy. Warren would continue to confound predictions until his retirement in 1969.

In addition to Brown, his court’s rulings gave us “Miranda rights,” an emphasis on due process, and the rise of public defenders. The court intervened on how legislative districts are drawn, popularizing the phrase, “one man, one vote.”

The Warren Court is responsible for the case that established the First Amendment doctrine of “actual malice,” in New York Times vs. Sullivan in 1964, which created a high bar for public officials in libel cases.

The Warren Court rulings baffled many observers who expected his background, as a prosecutor and governor, would have made him a staunch defender of states’ rights and law enforcement; he turned out to be a federalist and advocate for accused.

He said, “The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.”

Warren also was a pragmatist, who observed, “I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures.”